Arguable
one of the best Westerns ever made, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”
is Leone’s first masterpiece. Having invented the spaghetti-western a few
years prior by virtually copying Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” frame by frame
as “A Fistful of Dollars” to such a degree that Toho sued him, Leone used
the spaghetti-western as a form to attack the, in Leone’s opinion, dominating
morality of American Puritanism.

In
order to do so, Leone re-invited the genre. By re-examination the last days of
the “West”, an American torn apart by civil war, about to be civilized by
the railroad, his protagonist was “the man without a name”, a mythical
figure raised by the American spirit, but without the crippling morality: It was
in “A Fistful of Dollars” that we saw a gun fired and the bullet hitting its
target in the same frame, a presentation originally forbidden by MPAA. The fact
that Eastwood's character ("The Man without a Name") is a criminal,
who robs and lies, and yet is the hero, with whom we sympathize, marked a
significant change in the paradigm in the Western. The characters in Leone’s
Westerns are selfish and completely without any moral: Sentenza shoots Stevens
and his son in cold blood, then takes his money and goes and kills Baker, and
“Joe” (Eastwood) backstabs Tuco for no reason.

Re-inventing
the genre, Leone re-invented the imagery. “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”
is full of almost surreal imagery: the ghost towns, the lonely house in the
middle of nowhere, the huge cemeteries, the trenches: all noting upon the films
central motif: Death. Where lonely houses or settlements aren’t unusual in
Westerns, they are normally surrounded by lifestock or fields: In the Westerns
of Leone, they are surrounded by dry land. Notice the opening sequence: broken
down wagons, broken barrels, torn posters – all suggesting decay and an end.
We are likewise constantly introduced to imagery of noses, guns, cemeteries and
dead people. It if wasn't for the films boyish humour, this would very well be
the most depressing and bleakest Western by Leone.

As
an extension of re-inventing the genre, Leone also re-invented frame
compositions: not only transitions between extreme close-ups and extreme long
shots, but he introduced the now iconographic Leone close up (EECU – Eyes
Only), on which Eastwood once joked, “in those days I was such a bad actor,
they only shot by eyes.” The cinematography of Colli is breathtaking in its
use of scope and how it composes in space. Another Leone element is
snailcrawling pace: All his Westerns are incredible slow. Where the tendency in
American Westerns moved towards a faster pace and more graphical killings
(especially by Sam Peckinpah), Leone did the exact opposite. His Westerns spends
eons of time, before a sudden shooting.

As
revisionism, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” stands directly opposite
Leone’s other seminal Western, “Once
Upon a Time in the West”, with its cynical view on both the genre and
the west, full of humour and pathos. Where “Once Upon a Time in the West” is
serious and full of drama, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” has the same
tone as films like “Gunga-Din”, full of boyish action and often corny humour:
Actually, there are many similarities between “Gunga-Din” and “The Good,
The Bad and The Ugly”. Nevertheless Leone is able to set a serious tone by his
motif of decay – and present the most impressive composed show-down in any
Western.

ADDITION - Region FREE
Blu-ray -
April 09': Firstly, this is the French
Blu-ray
edition and IS Region FREE (as verified by my Momitsu player) but many things lead me to believe it will be
EXACTLY the same as the US
MGM
Blu-ray disc
coming out on May 15th, 2009 - except for the French language packaging. It's
region-free and main menus are in English. This is probably the only edition
that will be available and it is 'international' with plenty of subtitle and
some DUB options. Finally, the disc takes up almost 48 Gig of the available,
dual-layered, 50 and I can't see a US version extending beyond that. No, I'm
fairly certain this will be the same transfer as on the US
Blu-ray. We
will compare but I'm not expecting any surprises. So, let's take a look at
this...

How does it look? Well the 'Extended' DVD was quite strong, but, of course, this
high-definition transfer exceeds it in most visual categories. Detail is only
marginally better but where I noticed the greatest improvement is the absence of
prominent artifacts that exist in the SD-DVDs (ex. the sky in the desert capture below.)

The color scheme seems to support both the 'Extended' and the PAL 'SD' but is
somewhat warmer without green/yellow infiltration. Black levels are deeper with
contrast better defined
and there is a marginally more information in the frame. The comparative
captures may not indicate the advancement that many fans were hoping, but in
motion this looks quite good and we've added some further stills at the bottom
to help support the
Blu-ray
appearance. I should state that any improvement
that exists here will be solely dependant on the system that you view it - the
larger - the more advanced the superiority over the DVD.
In the end it's a 43 year-old film and even with the strong cleaning and
restoration - the image is at the mercy of original production. Mostly this
looks as expected - no gloss, a dusty, grittier, and sometimes an even duller,
look but the frequent absence of grain makes one think momentarily of DNR
(Digital Noise Reduction). While I suspect it in some scenes it is absent
throughout most and if it was applied - wasn't blanketed. It
represents a 'flatter' look than
A Fistful of Dollars on
Blu-ray - a
film made only 2 years earlier.

The DTS-HD Master 5.1 at 2887 kbps seems to show more depth than
its DVD counterpart but the mix won't blow the windows out although the segments
with canon-fire were fairly aggressive. Ennio Morricone's
iconic score is as haunting as ever an the available Italian track is 2.0
channel - not mono as on the DVD.

Nothing new, or
Blu-ray exclusive with the
extras - they repeat the MGM extended with the commentaries, deleted scenes and
the interesting documentaries. The trailers are unrestored and in HD!

ADDITION May 2005: MGM - PAL
DVD -
The R2 UK lacks the original
Italian mono, but features German and French DD 5.1
instead. The color palette matches that of the
Region 1 Extended version and the PAL may be negligibly sharper. A good disc
aside from the loss of the Italian audio.

The extras appears to be the same as the R1
extended and the this
edition contains a booklet as well, but again the
R2 lacks the "5 relief printed reproductions of
posters and the Original Sound Track cover".

****

The Extended Version Collector's
Set DVD is simply impressive. Beautifully presented, fat and balanced
colours, great 5.1 sound, along with the original 1.0 Italian mono for the
purists. Add to that a very insightful commentary. I only all DVDs were
presented like this.

A second DVD is full with additional material. Starting with 80-minutes of
newly produced documentaries reflection upon the many aspects of this film,
it also presents us with 2 deleted scenes, reconstructed as material was
damaged or lost.

While the two versions differ 16 minutes 5 seconds, most of the newly
inserted material is present on the MGM DVD from 2001 in form of deleted
scenes. An example of a deleted scene from the 2001 DVD and its present form
on the 2004 DVD is shown above in the menu section. Where the deleted scenes
are in Italian, the restored and inserted scenes have been newly dubbed by
the actors. It is strange to watch the new version, when one has seen the
"original" so many times, and the some of the new scenes do feel
abrupt.
Personally, I am holding on to my "original" version, as the two versions
are so different.

Another significant difference about the 2004 DVD is the frame of the image.
While some scenes are cropped up to 4%, some scenes reveals more image than
the 2001. So this cropping may be a side effect of some sort of scanning.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
(UPDATE) - Now that I have seen the three-hour film print, I have discovered
that the actual film restoration is a true restoration and far, far superior
to this DVD set. Though still not a three-strip Technicolor print, the lack
of grain, color consistency and lack of redness on the print are impressive.
The DVD is a poor representation of how saved and upgraded the film is. If a
dye-transfer source could be found, all Sony/MGM would need to do is matrix
the print into the three strips if the Technicolor format was revived and
use a theoretical old Technicolor print in pristine shape to change and
recreate the color. As for the sound, the theater showed it in Dolby SR, but
I heard sound and fullness NOT on the DVD's Dolby 5.1 mix, so the sound mix
is actually better too. I grossly underestimated how downtraded the DVD set
was and now that Sony has delayed the previous DOLLARS films in the U.S.
market, they should reissue all three as DTS Superbit Deluxe titles and do
the stunning
restoration work proper justice. That should extend to DUCK, YOU SUCKER aka
A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, which they also had saved and fixed. Now I want to
see a new print of Paramount's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST to compare!